The Book of Margery Kempe tells the story of a women who struggles with her sexuality. Margery Kempe feels the need to go on a sexual hiatus due to her paranoia that Jesus is punishing her for having sex. Margery attempts to promise herself to Jesus but her husband continues to have sex with her. In order to go through with her promise, she makes a deal with her husband that as long as they aren't engaging in sexual activity, she will pay his debts. Margery attempts to establish authority in her life through a spiritual exploration. She struggles with her identity as a mother and wife and wishes to gain a new perspective on life. Gender roles, rape culture, and the need for empowerment in The Book of Margery Kempe cause Margery Kempe to …show more content…
lose her sanity. Throughout Margery's life, she is constantly faced with gender roles. The expectations of women are very strict, due to Margery existing in the 14th century. Women are expected to stay home and have little control over their lives. Margery is constantly trying to escape this patriarchy, which causes Margery to lose her mind. Not only does Margery face the expectations of society, but she struggles to practice the principles of religion. Margery believes she is in contact with Jesus throughout her life, which causes her to adhere to his propositions. Margery suspects she is being punished throughout her life due to her constant struggles. This causes her to reach out to her spiritual self and speak with Jesus. This is an attempt to escape the real world and a result of her madness. Furthermore, gender roles in Margery's life cause her to constantly search for reassurance and answers. She goes through a spiritual exploration in which she desires to establish some sort of authority in her life. The book reads, “Another time, as this creature prayed to God that she might live chaste by the leave of her husband. Christ said to her mind, ‘You must fast on Fridays both from food and from drink, and you shall have your desire before Whitsunday, for I shall suddenly slay our husband’” (Kempe, 17). This shows how Margery is constantly looking to the spiritual essence for answers. She desires to be guided as to what her choices should be by the forces in her life. This causes Margery to go mad and imagine that she is in contact with Jesus as a way to avoid the real men around her. In an article titled, Margery Kempe and The Meaning of Madness, Roy Porter says, “Having undergone the twin crisis of perpetual insanity and business failure, Margery experienced an overwhelming urge to sever herself from all the ways of the world” (40). Margery attempts to escape the odds when they are pinned against her. She struggles with the role she is assigned to live and cannot find comfort in being a mother. This causes Margery to lose her sanity and to look for spiritual authority. Moreover, Margery Kempe is faced with the rape culture of her time period.
She is repeatedly raped by her husband which takes a huge toll on her sanity. Margery begins to fear and despise all men which causes her to look to spiritual beings such as God and Jesus. The book says, “and on nights had she most dread often times, and perhaps it was of her ghostly enemy, for she was ever afraid to have been ravished or defiled. She dared trust on no man; whether she had cause or no; she was ever afraid” (Kempe, 175). This shows how Margery fears being raped due to her experiences. Her husband's inability to treat her as a human being causes her to fear all men. The continuous abuse Margery faces causes her to want to reclaim her virginity. She feels guilty for engaging in sex with her husband although she is forced against her will. In an article titled, Manipulating Mary: Maternal, Sexual, and Textual Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe, Tara Williams writes, “She cannot recapture her virginity, but she distances herself from the fleshly and sinful connotations of motherhood by establishing a chaste marriage” (536). This attempt to repay God for what she believes in sinful, causes her to lose her sanity. Margery tries to escape the authority of her husband by making a deal with him. Her inability to control her sex life causes Margery to search for another form of authority. She uses her interactions with Jesus as a way to find purpose and establish herself as a worthy
being. Margery's need for empowerment is shown through her spiritual exploration and her need to travel. She attempts to establish some form of authority in her life in order to gain a sense of power. Due to the men in her life constantly telling her what to do she feels powerless and struggles to value herself. Margery travels to Jerusalem as a way to institute a purpose in her life. She enjoys the thrill of the journey, which is evident in her strong desire to travel throughout her life. Traveling as a women is a very dangerous activity that could result in her being raped or attacked. Margery wishes to travel regardless and shows she enjoys the thrill of not knowing what could happen next. Margery does this in an attempt to go against social norms and break away from her roles as a mother. She needs to feel a purpose outside of her home and cannot be viewed as sexual object anymore. In an article titled, Margery Kempe as a Traveler by Terence N. Bowers, he writes, “the violation is not just of one's duty, but also of one's place in the social structure and of the limit of what one can be in the world, and is thus a deep offense against society. While men often form their identities by extending themselves beyond the home in journeys of conquest, discovery, or trade, women's identities are typically defined within the home” (4). This shows how Magery attempts to escape the patriarchy by taking actions not expected of a women. Margery does this to deal with her insanity. In The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery loses her mind as a result of gender roles, rape culture, and her need for empowerment. Margery struggles to come to terms with her life due to her struggles and unhappy marriage. She feels she has little control over her life and wishes to be empowered. This causes her to travel and have a chaste marriage in a way to escape the guilt she feels for being a sexual being. Margery's struggles cause her to reach out to her spiritual self and explore the many wonders of life. Margery madness is a result of her time and her desire to go against society's expectations of her. She struggles to accept the life she has been forced to live and as a result seeks to find a new purpose through her spiritual journey.
She is a martyr whose death occurred sometime in the late thirteenth century. Unlike the main character Kempe, Saint Margert is known to be a virgin and reject any sexual temptation that came her way. Although Saint Margaret differs from Kempe in many ways, there are some common links between the two. It is clear that she is not a saint, but the similarities and differences between these two women are interesting and enthralling throughout this book.
The Merchant's Prologue and Tale presents the darkest side of Chaucer's discussion on marriage. Playing off both the satire of the moral philosopher, the Clerk, and the marital stage set by the Wyf of Bathe, the Merchant comes forth with his angry disgust about his own marital fate. Disillusioned and depraved, the Merchant crafts a tale with a main character who parallels his own prevarication and blind reductionism while he simultaneously tries to validate his own wanton life by selling his belief to the other pilgrims. As both pervert reality through pecuniary evaluations on different levels, however, both are exposed to be blind fools, subject to the very forces that they exert on others. As this reversal happens and the Merchant satirizes Januarie blindness, Chaucer reveals the Merchant's blindness, giving him the very significance that he had spent his whole tale trying to deny.
To conclude, we find Margery crying and weeping all throughout the book. I find this to be some sort of depression, maybe it is because she can't be with God in heaven so she feels the need to cry. All throughout the book, Margery is getting people into trouble with her reputation of being "evil". Just one of the instances is the time her travel companions were thrown into jail in Leicester.
The novel complicates its own understanding of women
Through a feminist lens, it is evident that Mary is a product of the attitudes of her society in the mid-twentieth century, where patriarchal views are still in power. As a pregnant woman, Dahl portrays Mary as feeling that she needs her husband to take care of her and their child for both social and financial stability. This emphasizes the unequal gender roles of that time, where women are subordinate to men. Additionally, through a psychoanalytic lens, one can agree that Mary’s rejection of her husband’s news shows her Id response. Although Mary’s consciousness recognizes the situation, her unconscious mind is trying to repress the pain.
Preliminarily, had been established that Mrs. Maloney was the murderer of her husband Mr. Maloney. Despite this, it was for good reason, as it was due in part to mental anguish. This can be concluded by the reactions and behaviors Mrs. Maloney presented in Dahl’s eyewitness account. To start, Mrs. Maloney was headed for the store at around 6 o’clock. Why would she continue to act even if her husband is dead? “Hello, Sam,” she said brightly, smiling at the man in the shop. “Good evening, Mrs. Maloney. How are you?” “I want some potatoes, please, Sam. Yes, and perhaps a can of beans, too. Patrick’s decided he's tired and he doesn't want to go out tonight,” she told him. … “Anything else?” The grocer turned his head to one side, looking at her. “How about a dessert? … How about a nice piece of cake?” … “Perfect,” she said. “He loves it.”” This quote, from Dahl’s account, shows that she obviously cannot completely function mentally. She murdered him, then went and bought him cake. At this point, she is very confused about herself and the events that occu...
...Christian values in her own way in order to justify her character’s actions, in addition to using religion as a way of explaining what she thinks of herself. On the other hand, Margery Kempe was a woman who took religion to a new level as a result of “supposedly” having very intense visions and experiences with Jesus Christ. The result was a woman who believed that she had more religious authority than an archbishop of the church and who possessed the strength to continue on her path, despite allegations of being psychotic.
She behaved the way she felt was right according to her very devout faith and tries to live her life as God instructed her as best she could. She faced scorn from not only her husband, but also her fellow Christians and peers and yet she never backed down. She stood up against great suffering in order to do what she felt was right, much like Christ himself. Margery Kempe was anything but the stereotypical medieval woman; she was a faithful woman of God who was far more concerned with her heavenly pursuits that her earthly life. While she may have annoyed many of her fellow Christians and peers, and may seems fraudulent or insane to a modern reader, Margery Kempe was a genuine mystic who lived as devout a life as she
Kempe’s story has a typical beginning. She is married, soon thereafter conceives her first child, and goes on to give birth to fourteen more children. She assumes the responsibilities of a wife and mother whose position in the late medieval society is assured by the solid reputation of her father, John Burnham, and her husband, John Kempe. However, Kempe’s conventional story changes early in her life by an elusive interaction with Jesus that she experiences shortly after her first excruciating child birth. Women were expected to carry out the societal norm of a good wife and mother which meant staying home to tend to the family. As we’ve seen, this is the opposite of how Kempe wanted to live her life — she hastily became distinguished and recognized. Her autobiography explains her own efforts to dissociate herself from the covetous and restric...
The human experience is riddled with unpalatable truths that we discover as we journey through life. Influencing our values and attitudes by deliberately challenging the reader with humanity’s unpalatable truths, Ian McEwan prompts the reader to consider our own moral compass through the character of Briony Tallis. During the course of ‘Atonement’, McEwan demonstrates that actions and words inevitably have consequences on not only the individual but also those surrounding them. Throughout the three fundamental stages of Briony’s complicated life, her coming of age story has developed into the unpalatable obstacle of atoning for her mistakes. In misunderstanding, Briony appears naive; she thinks she can control aspects of her own world, acting as God and foreshadowing the ending of the novel, but the unpalatable truth is that Briony could not have atoned due to the circumstances in which she ultimately caused.
For years, females have used their sexuality for empowerment. In the fairy tale “The company of Wolves” by Angela Carter uses her sexuality to keep her alive. Then in the story “Yellow Woman” by Leslie Silko her sexuality is her excuse for disappearing. Both story talks about sexuality, but how they empower the situation is different. Which story shows sexuality for empowerment better?
Paradise deals with the lives of dejected women and the support group the women form for each other. Morrison draws attention to this key issue by removing the element of race from the novel, a heavy contrast to her earlier works, by not allowing the reader to know the races of the women. Thus the relationships present throughout the work can be seen strictly through the contrast between the abusive and damaging relationships found outside of the convent to the supportive and loving ones in the convent. This removal of race also allows us to see the bigger picture, which is not dictated by race (Smith). By examining the relationships in the novel, we see two distinct arenas dealing with identity and the women, which is the world outside of the convent, and the convent. Before reaching the convent, identity for the women is a broken notion in which the men they associate with dictate.
extremes of a manager having no desire to give up his control over his employees and
In the text, "The Book of Margery Kempe”, transcribed by an anonymous priest and translated by Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe incited a notion that she was a part of something greater than herself through the transformation of her identify by her performance after her first childbirth, how she dealt with the scared through her crying performances, and how she taught and persuaded those around her to follow God through her religious performances. Firstly, Kempe’s identity transformed after the birth of her first child, representing that she was a part of something greater than herself because of her ability to transform herself into a devote woman of God. Kempe had found herself attacked by illness after her first child was conceived, and the devil began to appear in her life and convinced her to betray her devotion to religion. She was able to transform this mindset, however, after she had a vision of Jesus.
The Prioress' Tale is overtly a religious tale centered around Christian principles and a devotion to the Virgin Mary, but within the warm affection that the Prioress shows for her Christian faith is a disquieting anti-Semitism that will be immediately obvious to the modern reader. The tale is an overwrought melodrama, replete with scenes of such banal sentimentalism and simplistic moral instruction. The tale is an unabashed celebration of motherhood. The guiding figure of the tale is the Virgin Mary, who serves as the exemplar for Christian values and the intervening spirit who sustains the murdered child before he passes on to heaven. Her mortal parallel is the mother of the murdered boy, who dearly loves her son and struggles to find the boy when he is lost.